I travel for work fairly often, and try to make the most of my time away from home. Usually, that means visiting a local museum, finding a nice spot to hike, or just indulging in some great regional food. Inevitably, I end up with time to kill at the end of the day, alone in my hotel room with unfamiliar channels on the tv and a complete lack of interest in golf. To fill the downtime, I’ve started bringing my solo show on the road!
My Minimalist Solo RPG Travel Setup
This week, I was traveling in the northeastern US, and had the pleasure of stopping by Mayhem’s Bookstore and Board Game Cafe in Lancaster, PA. I settled in for some solo play and a truly stellar London fog with marshmallow syrup.
My travel kit is so simple it almost doesn’t bear explaining….almost. I mention it mainly to illustrate just how simple and compact a solo gaming setup can be, especially if you’re just discovering solo rpgs.
All I needed was:
- a set of dice
- standard deck of cards
- game book
- notebook/pen
That’s it. The end- and even this can be consolidated if you want to travel even lighter! You can swap physical dice and cards for apps on your phone, load the game book onto an ereader, or type your journal entries right into a notes app for an even more condensed setup.
Carved by the Garden: First Impressions
For this trip, I dug into Carved by the Garden, a solo folk horror RPG powered by the Wretched & Alone System. I’ve also been extremely into folk horror as spooky season rolls around, so this was the perfect choice to play in the drizzly beginnings of a New England fall.
I’ve played several games based on this framework, and I have to say it’s a great system! It balances narrative freedom within preset prompts, and I constantly found ways to weave the directives together in ways that made sense for my story.
One of my favorite things about games based on Wretched & Alone is that the prompts don’t necessarily tell you what happens. Instead, they give you pieces of a puzzle, and you get to decide which deliciously horrifying way you choose to arrange them. This makes the writing process feel much more personal, as you are the one deciding how the pieces fit into your character’s story.
For example, during this session, I drew three prompts:
- I pass through a creepy orchard where the trees ooze with thick sap
- I trip and fall and am coated with mud that forms a stain I can’t wash off
- I find a dead body with my knife embedded in the chest.
I could have treated these as three completely separate encounters. Instead, I decided to connect them in a way that felt natural to my story and character.
I explored the creepy orchard, finding a crumbling and aged skeleton resting in a pool of evil-looking sap. My knife was somehow embedded in its chest, even though I swore I had it sheathed in my beltloop that morning, as I always do. As I pulled the knife free, a torrent of black ooze fell from the branches above, coating me in a sticky substance that burned like gasoline. I managed to wash it off, but was left with an indelible handprint seared into my arm.
Carved by the Garden great at building narrative tension, and every card flip and die roll brings you closer to your end. There’s a built-in sense of horror and suspense, even when you think you’re the one driving the game.
Future Plans
Moving forward, my goal is to find a persistent solo campaign I can take with me everywhere.
I love the idea of building a single world that grows alongside my real-world travels. A long-term story I can pick up in one hotel room, continue three states over on my next trip, and build out over months or years.
I’m still firmly in the research phase for that one, though. Because as it turns out… researching solo RPGs and actually playing them are two completely different hobbies!
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